This invention relates generally to social networking systems and in particular to capturing interactions with descriptions of actions performed by users outside of a social networking system.
Social networking systems, or social utilities that track and enable connections between users (including people, businesses, and other entities), have become prevalent in recent years. These social networking systems allow users to more efficiently communicate information. For example, a social networking system user may post contact information, background information, job information, hobbies, and/or other user-specific data to the social networking system. Other users may then review the posted data by browsing user profiles or searching for profiles including specific data. Social networking systems also allow users to associate themselves with other users, creating a web of connections among the users of the social networking system. The social networking system may use these connections to provide users with more relevant information.
Users of a social networking system frequently maintain accounts on systems or applications outside of the social networking system, commonly referred to as “third-party systems” or “third-party applications.” These third-party systems or third-party applications may communicate actions to a social networking system for association with a social networking system user performing the actions. Various third-party systems or third-party applications may specify actions and/or objects that are communicated to the social networking system to describe interactions with a third-party system or third-party application. The social networking system may then generate stories or messages to inform other users of the interactions with a third-party system or with a third-party application.
While conventional social networking systems may notify users of an action performed by another user outside of the social networking system, additional actions outside of the social networking system and the user associated with the performed action are not identified by conventional social networking systems as associated with the performed action. For example, a user of a third-party system may comment on another third-party system user's movie rental via the third-party system. While the other user's movie rental and the user's comment are communicated to the social networking system for association with the corresponding users, the relationship between the comment and the movie rental on the third-party system is not communicated to conventional social networking systems. This inability to identify relationships between actions and/or objects maintained outside of the social networking system limits the information about actions outside of the social networking system communicated to social networking system users.